


gutted

by Ryah_Ignis



Series: Season 13 Codas [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: ... - Freeform, 12x02 coda, Grieving Dean, Hurt Sam, M/M, everybody is sad and that's all you need to know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 17:07:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12462165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryah_Ignis/pseuds/Ryah_Ignis
Summary: “You gave him a room?”Sam runs into Dean in the kitchen.  His brother has a half empty bottle of Crowley’s favored whiskey dangling from one hand.  Sam really doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of a drunk Dean deciding to haul off and shoot Jack in the head, so he tugs the bottle out of Dean’s un-protesting grasp.  That’s when he knows it’s really bad.  Usually, Dean would be telling him off for trying to baby him by now.“I’m not gonna let him sleep on the floor, Dean.  God.”He can’t help looking at Jack and finding a reflection of his twenty-year-old self staring back at him."Post 13x02, Sam and Dean talk about Jack, Cas, and Mary.





	gutted

The bunker seems gutted, somehow, like all the life had drained out with the Men of Letters’ break-in.  Sam quickly diverts his thoughts from Lady Bevell as he holds the door open over Jack’s head.

“It’s not conventional, but it’s home.”

For someone who’s only a few days old, he manages to look awfully judgmental as he slides under Sam’s arm and into the bunker.  None of the wards so much as shudder; Sam looks back at Dean with a triumphant smirk.  Jack might be far more human than either of them had anticipated.

“You can’t see the sun,” Jack observes in that slow, steady way of his.

Watching him stand there, surrounded by the oppressive emptiness of the bunker, it’s easy to forget he opened a hellmouth earlier today. 

“It’s safe,” Dean snaps before Sam has a chance to respond, “and that’s that.”

He shoves past both of them and heads towards his room without another word.  Sam watches him go with a small sigh.  It’s going to take a life or death situation or two for him to trust Jack.  Not that Sam thinks those are going to be in short supply.

“Come on,” he tells Jack. “I’ll get you a room.”

He settles on the one that Kevin once claimed, even though he has to show Jack how to pull a fitted sheet over the mattress and fluff up the pillow.  Cas’s room is probably spotless, but Sam can’t bring himself to hand it over just yet.  Mom’s room is utterly out of the question.  He doesn’t care what Dean says—she’s alive.  He’d know it if she wasn’t.

“Let me know if you need anything.”

Jack sits down on the edge of the bed.  He’s still staring at the ground by the time Sam leaves.

“You gave him a _room_?”

He runs into Dean in the kitchen.  His brother has a half empty bottle of Crowley’s favored whiskey dangling from one hand.  Sam really doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of a drunk Dean deciding to haul off and shoot Jack in the head, so he tugs the bottle out of Dean’s un-protesting grasp.  That’s when he knows it’s really bad.  Usually, Dean would be telling him off for trying to baby him by now.

“I’m not gonna let him sleep on the floor, Dean.  God.”

He can’t help looking at Jack and finding a reflection of his twenty-year-old self staring back at him.  Motherless, fatherless, gifted in ways he couldn’t even comprehend, hopelessly (cursedly) intertwined with Lucifer.  He wants to be the guiding force he never got, the one person that would never lose faith in him. 

“Why the hell not?  Can’t he just mojo himself a bed?”

Sam takes a deep breath. “You know he doesn’t know the extent of his powers.”

“Or he’s just faking it so that we protect him!  Come on, Sam.  Don’t be naïve about this.”

Sam knows the smartest thing to do would be to go to bed.  It’s been a long day for both of them, made longer still by the losses of Mom and Cas.  He’s not in the right state of mind for this conversation and he knows it.  But still.

“He’s not inherently evil.”

“Look at his dad!”

Sam glares. “So what, a connection to Lucifer automatically makes you an evil son of a bitch?”

Dean scrubs a hand over his face. “That’s not what I meant.”

And yeah, Sam knows that.  Intellectually, anyway.  But he remembers what it’s like to feel like you’ve been tainted, marked since birth for a darker purpose.  Remembers feeling like his life wasn’t his own, like someone else was pulling the strings.  He knows all too well what Jack feels.  And it’s cold and lonely and isolating.

“It’s what you said.”

“What do you want me to say?  He killed Cas!”

Something in him seems to deflate at the very thought.  Sam wishes now, more than ever, that Dean would give words to his grief.  But every time something like this happens, it’s like he’s the four-year-old with fire in his eyes all over again, unable to speak even a single word.

“He didn’t kill—” Sam begins, the weariness settling into his bones.

“He might as well have!  He was—I don’t know.  Brainwashed.  Controlled.  He wouldn’t have been with Kelly.  He wouldn’t have gone through the rift, wouldn’t have—wouldn’t have—”

For one long, painful moment, Sam thinks his brother is about to cry, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.  Instead, Dean collects himself, taking in a deep breath to steady himself.

“Dean, I know what Cas—”

“Meant to me?” Dean lets out something almost like a laugh. “No you don’t.”

Sam doesn’t bother trying to pacify him. “Besides, we need him to get Mom back.”

Dean makes a halfhearted reach for the whiskey that Sam rebuffs. “She’s dead and you know it.  Lucifer isn’t merciful.”

Sam’s eyes drift closed of their own accord as he tries to keep the memory of fire at bay.  The hallucinations are long gone, but just digging out the bullet hasn’t healed the scars.  His fingers search out the old scar on his palm and dig in without his permission.

“I know he’s not.” Sam closes his eyes. “I know him better than—better than I know anything.  He’s not merciful. Which is why he’s keeping her alive.  We need to get to her, before—”

Before what?  He drives her insane?  He rips her into so many pieces that they can’t begin to hope to put her back together again?  Bile rises in his throat and Sam forces it back down.

“Sam—”

“He wouldn’t let me fade away, no matter how hard I tried.  She’s alive.  If only because he needs entertainment.”

At that, Dean gets up and stalks out of the kitchen.  Sam sinks on to the uncomfortable bench next to the table, massaging his temples.

He doesn’t know where they go from here.


End file.
